


Cherry Pie

by malec_hun (orsoly_writes)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec/Underhill BrOTP, Alternate Universe - Human, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Neighbors, Romantic Fluff, Teacher Alec Lightwood, Writer Magnus Bane, single dad Alec
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 06:49:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16113077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orsoly_writes/pseuds/malec_hun
Summary: Alec is living his life with his daughter and one day new neighbor moving into the next house.





	Cherry Pie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariadne (Ariadnem)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariadnem/gifts).



> This work is gift for the lovely Ari. 
> 
> Ari, I hope you'll like it. Thank you for all your hard work and putting up with me <3
> 
> I'm having problem to insert the story's cover but you all can check it out on Twitter [Tweet to @malec_hun](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?screen_name=malec_hun&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> 
> Also, sending my love to Yara for doing the beta to this part :*

Alec closed the classroom door after the last student had left. He had waited with crossed arms and hadn’t even hidden his annoyance as Miss Camille Belcourt packed her books and pens carefully in her probably-very-expensive bag. 

And of course, Miss Camille had to take her time when Alec was in a hurry. He had forced a smile when she passed Alec by with a devilish smile on her face.

He almost bumped into three students as he ran through the high school’s hallway he was working at, escaping the building and heading to the parking lot where his car was parked. He's always been able to park close to the school’s entrance since he was one of the first teachers who arrived early every day. 

And he wasn’t competing with Mr. Steve Underhill — best friend-slash-history teacher — for the shaded parking spot… No, not at all.

Underhill had a cabrio, so he wasn’t going to suffer from overheated interior after work, so Alec wasn't feeling guilty at all. Anyways, it was fun.

Once he made his way to the car and got inside, he started the engine, and quickly turned the radio station before it could've even started.

He was mean, he thought, but he was going to listen to that  _ music _ for a great twenty minutes later today, so he could be selfish, just a bit, for now.

He pressed the buttons to roll down the windows on his side and on the passenger’s side and let himself enjoy the summer wind blowing across the car, feeling the whirling air on his skin as he drove off to pick his special someone up. 

Before that, he needed to stop by the grocery store to buy some supplies for tonight’s dinner and for the cherry pie.

He was pushing the shopping cart between the shelves collecting everything he needed, thinking about everything and nothing.

He was thirty-six, and had a great life. He had everything he ever wanted in his life.  _ Almost _ everything.

Damn! He owned a Ford family car and could legally use the family parking spot in front of the shop. That was something, right? Life goals, he thought, as he packed what he'd bought into the huge trunk of the car.

After Robert, his father, had left his mother ten years ago, his whole frame of mind had changed. He didn’t want to live a life where he had to be measured up to. He wanted to live his life his way. His mom had helped him a lot to see things right and enjoy everything to the fullest.

His mother opened his eyes up when she started to date with Luke. 

Love was treasure if you could give and receive it and you had to appreciate it without being biased. 

Family model, what was that? 

Yes, Alec had always dreamt of meeting someone, dating, falling in love, moving in together, going through the whole adoption process, raising children and growing old together with the love of his life. 

Time had passed, boyfriends had come and gone and Alec had reached twenty-eight already. And by the time, he would’ve had a husband according to his planned family model. 

He hadn’t been desperate just because he was alone, he had just wanted to be a father, he had wanted to know how it feels to receive unconditional love and share his life with someone, he had wanted to be responsible for someone, so he re created his new family model and erased—or more like replaced, because he still believed that someday, someone was going to come along—some points. Anyways, his old family model contained happy grandparents which didn’t exist anymore, at least not with his own father. 

For him, adoption had been the only solution to have a kid, with or without someone on his side, it didn't matter. It was going to happen one day, so he had skipped some points and one day had announced to his family that he was going adopt a baby.

 

***

 

Alec had never thought that he was going to fall in love with a woman… 

Well, it was another kind of love, but the most precious one Alec had ever experienced.

Madzie was Alec’s princess—like literally—there wasn’t a thing Alec wouldn’t do for her. 

The girl had been 3-months old when Alec had adopted her. He remembered the time when he had first seen the tiny little baby… He hadn’t dared to touch her or hold her in his arms. But when the nurse placed her in Alec’s big arms… The sight of the baby in pink had gone blurry in a split second, tears had fallen from Alec’s eyes. 

He had become a dad at that moment — or at least he thought he had — and he hadn’t known back at the time that there had been no books, no educational videos which could prepare him to be a parent. 

Infant colic and teething were bitches, and Alec would have gone willingly into that conversation anytime with anybody who said the opposite, he remembered those sleepless nights, when he and Madzie had cried together, walking back and forth in her room, carrying her in his arms, trying to calm both of them down. Or when she lay on his chest while he was sitting in that relax chair — must-have thing, Alec bespoke — in the corner of the pastel pink painted room. Or Alec had ended up curled in the crib with his daughter and that was one of the most comfortable positions — even though Alec wasn’t a short man — to lay in when his baby girl couldn’t sleep peacefully, caressing her back gently, listening to her steady breathing.

Those tiring days and nights can’t be compared to those ones when Alec’s heart melted from his daughter. Having a kid had given him so many heartwarming feelings he had never thought he was going to experience. Her smile, her laugh, her first words, her first steps… Alec would never trade those memories for anything. And he had tried to record every special moment of their life with his phone or his camera.

Madzie had caught the flu last weekend and she was feeling okay by now but Alec preferred she rested a few more days before she went back to pre-school. So she spent the days with her grandmother while Alec was at school.

Alec pulled over in front of the house where his mother and Luke lived. There weren't any old memories attached to that house. He had never lived in that one. It was a new and smaller house than the one he had grown up in. After his mother and father had divorced, they had sold the old house and Maryse had moved into a smaller one with Max.

Now she was living with Luke in it since Max went to college. 

Alec quickly made his way to the front door and opened the door without knocking or ringing the bell.

“Hello?!” He called out and walked toward the living room where he could hear some noises coming from.

He didn’t need to walk that much though.

“Daddy!”

Alec smiled automatically the moment he saw Madzie running towards him with her plastic dinosaur and plush Hulk toys in each of her hands. 

Alec opened his arms so his daughter could jump into his embrace.

Yes, Madzie’s favorites were Hulk and dinos and Alec would have never wanted to change her choice of toys, why would he? And they had had the best The Incredible Hulk and The Jurassic Park crossover father-daughter costumes last Halloween in the neighborhood—they still had some candies in a box on a hidden shelf in the pantry.

He remembered back at the time when he had been a kid and been mocked by Jace when he had joined Izzy to play with her dolls, changing diapers, bathing them. His brother told him he shouldn’t have done those girly things.

But his mom had always stopped Jace, telling him that just because Alec had played with girly things, that didn’t make him girly. Playing with doll didn’t make a boy girly and could only make him a good father later, she used to say. And if someone said he became gay because he played with dolls, he just let them know that he had had a fair share of boyish toys as well… His sexual orientation had nothing to do with the toys he used to play with, thank you very much.

And look at him now, he was a mature man, a single dad of a six-year-old girl. 

He was happy.

He never regretted any of his decisions in his life. And adopting Madzie was most definitely one of them. 

“Come on Madzie, we gotta go,” Alec said when he put his daughter on her feet after a tight hug.

“What’s the hurry, Alec?” Luke asked curiously, appearing at the living room’s doorway. 

“I need to grade some tests and I’m planning to bake a cherry pie,” Alec said following his daughter with his eyes as she collected her stuff in the living room.

“ _ The _ cherry pie?” Luke arched a brow when Alec looked at him and his mother was next to them, handing Madzie’s favorite blanket to Alec.

“Yes,  _ the _ cherry pie,” Alec nodded.

“Is there any special occasion?” Maryse asked confused, looking back and forth between Luke and Alec, searching for any clue if she had forgotten a birthday or an anniversary.

“Nah,” Alec waved her away, “just new neighbors,” he announced matter-of-factly.

“New neighbors and you’re making  _ the _ cherry pie?” Luke seemed as confused as his mother.

“Yes?” Alec’s eyes looked back and forth between them, “what?”

“Nothing,” his mother and Luke said at the same time.

“They’re our new neighbors, and we haven't had a chance to meet them, so I thought Madzie and I could go over and greet them” Alec explained.

“Oh, did you see the family? How many kids they have? I’m sure they’re gonna be friends with my granddaughter in no time,” Maryse said and caressed Madzie’s hair as she wrapped her arms around Luke.

“I don’t know…” Alec scratched the back of his neck, “I saw a woman and three men when they unloaded the boxes from the truck,” Alec explained, seeing his mom and Luke’s eyes widening.

The house next to theirs had been empty for almost a year and he had kind of felt happy when he saw the people moving in. It was a shame that that beautiful house had been empty for so long.

“I just want to make a good impression and get to know our new neighbors,” Alec explained.

“Yeah, you have to check them” Luke said, and Alec smiled that his mother’s other half turned to cop immediately.

“Okay, we really gotta go. Madzie?!” Alec said and the girl came back to them.

Alec watched as his mother and Luke planted kisses on Madzie’s cheeks and hair. The woman and the man walked them out and waved at them as Alec drove off.

 

***

 

“Wash your hands first,” Alec said as they entered their home, placing his bag and Madzie’s stuff on the dining table. He watched his daughter going toward the bathroom and then he turned on his heels to go back to his car and bring the bags with the groceries in it into the house.

He closed the door of the trunk and glanced at the house next to theirs. Nothing unusual could be seen, no car parked on the driveway. The new neighbors probably weren't home yet, he thought and went back into the house. 

Alec took off his shoes after he slammed the door closed with his hip, going to the kitchen with his arms full of with paper bags. He placed them on the kitchen island and turned to wash his hands at the sink. He was wiping his hands with the kitchen towel, tilting his head, trying to figure out if Madzie had been in the bathroom or if she’d gone to her room already. Then, he heard the flush of the toilet followed by the faucet, so he started to unpack from the bags.

Making cherry pie was one of their things which he felt so protective of so much. No one could join them, no one could know the recipe.

Back at the time, when Madzie had been almost three years old, she had lost her favorite cherry patterned pacifier somewhere in the supermarket, somewhere in the car, somewhere in the house and Alec turned the whole world upside down—almost literally—to find it but couldn't.

There had been no place where Alec didn’t search for it and he hadn’t been able to find one with the same pattern on it in stores. 

To divert Madzie’s attention and cheer her up, Alec had told her that they should make cherry pie so her pacifier was going to find its way back to their home. Silly solution but at that certain situation, it seemed to be the most acceptable one for both of them.

They had baked a cherry pie but the pacifier didn't show up, then they baked another one two days later, and so on…

The pacifier was forgotten, the cherry pie recipe was perfect. The Lightwoods, Underhill, Simon and Maia, Alec’s colleagues and even the postman had gotten a dish of cherry pie back then. 

The cherry pie eventually had been titled as ‘ _ the _ cherry pie’ or ‘Madzie and Alec’s pie’ and everybody had known what they had meant by that expression.

While the cherry pie was in the oven they had dinner and a little talk about their day. 

Now, Alec and Madzie were standing on the front porch of the next house, stuffed Hulk in Madzie’s hand and  _ the _ cherry pie in Alec’s. 

They were waiting for someone to open the door after Madzie pressed the doorbell. 

Alec could hear some noises from inside and then footsteps were coming toward the door. 

He looked down at his daughter who was waiting patiently, then he heard the door open and lifted his head to look at the new neighbor.

He swallowed as his eyes met with the man in front of him and tried to put himself together. To say the man was beautiful was an understatement. Alec’s eyes wandered on his exotic features as the other man looked at the pie in his hands then to Madzie next to him, mouth curling up to a soft smile.

“Hello,” he said and looked back at Alec.

“Hi, I’m…” Alec started to talk then cleared his throat, “we… we’re the Lightwoods. We live in the next house,” Alec looked at their house and he saw from the corner of his eye that the man followed suit.

“I’m Madzie,” his daughter said and Alec smiled.

“Hey Madzie,” the man stepped forward and crouched down in front of Madzie, “I’m Magnus, nice to meet you,” he said and held his hand out to Madzie who looked at her dad immediately.

Alec nodded and Madzie accepted the handshake.

“Nice to meet you,” Madzie said shyly and Alec’s smile grew wider with pride.

“I’m Alec,” he said and steadied the pie dish on one hand to reach his hand out for Magnus, who had stood up by the time, “we brought you a pie,” Alec added after a firm handshake and a polite smile, handing the dish to the neighbor. 

“Oh, that's very nice of you,” Magnus said and pushed the door wide open with his foot, gesturing to them to come in.


End file.
